First Love
by Dragon Mistress
Summary: Andromeda remembers her cousin Sirius, and his first lover. Warnings: SBRL SLASH, AU, OOTP Spoilers


**Disclaimer**: I don't own the Harry Potter characters, names, situations, etc. All belong to J.K. Rowling - and Warner Bros., I suppose, even though they didn't do anything but take credit for J.K.'s wonderful imagination.  
  
**WARNINGS:** AU, Slash (SB/RL), major OOTP spoilers, one swear, and mentions of incest.  
  
**Note:** Not the ideal way I picture Sirius and Andromeda's childhood relationship, but the idea came to me one day and I couldn't resist. Blame Sirius. Naughty Muse.  
  
**Thanks:** To mysticVigil and dragonprincess2028, my faithful beta readers. Cookies to you, girls!  
  
  
  
~First Love~  
  
  
  
Oh yeah, her mother, Andromeda, was my favourite cousin....  
- Sirius Black, _Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix_, Page 113 (American Version)  
  
  
  
  
I loved him, you know.  
  
More than I had a right to, I suppose.   
  
Sirius had always been the most charming, debonair person I have ever known - able to get anything he wanted out of almost anyone with just a smile and a toss of his dark hair. Only our family seemed impervious to his charms; he knew it and didn't bother. He had already given up on the lot of them by the time he was seven - very young but smart enough to see that his parents already favoured his three-year-old brother, Regulus.   
  
Since then I had been his comforter - the one he ran to when he skinned a knee, or when something scared him, or when his parents were being overly cruel to him again. I was only three years older than him, but he looked to me as a mother : an older female who loved him and was kind to him.  
  
It stayed that way as we got older. Even when he outgrew crying over injuries and hurtful words from his parents, he came to me with his problems. Not as often as he had when he was small; he had his best friends at school with him to help him through whatever happened. But almost every week he wrote me, asking for advice or simply just telling me what was going on in his life. He understood life as perfectly well as I did - our cruel, proud family was like a dark, all-covering fog, and he and I were lights in the dark to one another.   
  
Aside from the letters we wrote back and forth, we saw each other in school during his first four years there. When he came to Hogwarts I was starting in my fourth year. It had been nerve-wracking, watching him sit on the stool and sit quietly as McGonagall placed the Sorting Hat on his head. For a few terrified seconds I felt the way I had at my own Sorting, that the hat would sense the Black blood inside him and send him to Slytherin. When it shouted, to the whole hall, I went limp with relief : we had both escaped being put in the House we so despised.  
  
His mother delegated to me the task of watching over Sirius while he was at school. Actually, she ordered me to keep him out of trouble, to which I failed abysmally. But I _did_ watch over him. He was, after all, my cousin and the only other member of our family to turn out halfway decent.   
  
After I left Hogwarts we started writing letters to each other; I only saw him once, during the summer holiday after his fifth year. When he came home that time, he had completely changed... suddenly he was nearly a foot taller and was swiftly becoming the handsome man he would have been if Azkaban had not wrought its horrors upon him. At fifteen, he possessed an almost ethereal beauty that made me wonder why he didn't have a girlfriend... I often mused over what kind of girl couldn't love him, or at least find him attractive, with his shoulder-length black hair, mischievous smirk, and mysterious midnight-blue eyes. It was those beautiful eyes, trademark of the Black family, that seemed the most alive part of him. I loved his eyes.... I loved _him_.  
  
And he loved me. He told me so, the night before he returned to school, when we were lying side-by-side in his bed.  
  
It was wrong, and we both knew it. But we were helpless to resist. He had been upset and unhappy because of another stupid shouting match with his parents; I had heard him retreat to his room and went to talk to him; I had held him in my arms and soothed him.   
  
I guess if I was one of those whiny people who never own up to anything, I could blame it on anything else in the world. His parents, who made him upset; my fierce protectiveness which made me want to hurt anyone who hurt him; the side of me that was like his mother and wanted him to be happy; the hungry look in his eyes, the feel of his lips on mine and his hand running along my thigh.  
  
I love you, Andromeda.  
  
He had whispered it in my ear as I put my arms around him and drew him down, covering my bare body with his own.   
  
I love you, Sirius.  
  
I had murmured it as I guided him inside me, then again as I kissed him and ran a finger along his jaw. He smiled down at me, magnificent eyes hazy with pleasure as our bodies became one in a ritual as old as time and as sweet as the waters of Lethe. The first time, for both of us.  
  
I love you, Andromeda.  
  
Whispered fiercely in my ear before he stepped onto the train which took him away to school and out of my life for three years.  
  
  
I didn't see him again until he was eighteen years old and living on his own; he had left his parents at sixteen, moved in with James, and when he graduated from Hogwarts got his own flat. He was even more handsome than he had been at fifteen, and finally had someone beside him - not a girl, but his friend Remus... who was now more than a friend. They were bound together by the ancient magic connecting a werewolf to its mate, and I could tell Sirius was happier than he had ever been. The hug and kiss he gave me that day was the same as always, nothing more than a loving greeting for a favourite relative. Our night together firmly cemented in the past and wholly ignored... we never spoke of it. But by then I had Ted, everything a woman could want in a husband, and I was pregnant.  
  
I love you, Remus.  
  
Softly spoken to his lover when they thought I wasn't listening.  
  
  
It broke my heart when they took him to Azkaban, and I could not believe it. Once a Black, always a Black, Bellatrix had smirked after hearing the news, and I had thrown her out of my house... and spent the rest of the day in bed, sobbing over the fate of my cousin.  
  
Of course, I felt thoroughly miserable and sorry for Remus, whose life had been turned completely upside-down in only a few short hours... two of his best friends dead, and his lover responsible for it all. He came to visit every now and then, pretending he came simply to chat with Ted and I and to play with Nymphadora, but I think he was seeking comfort from us as well. Just being there seemed to make him feel better, at least for awhile. His visits gradually became less and less often, but each time he visited I could see how the loss of Sirius was affecting him - whatever he believed or at least _thought_ he believed, being alone was taking its toll on him. He was very tired and wan, his hair starting to go grey at only twenty-two. While that may have been the side effects of his transformations, it couldn't have been helped by his mate's absence.  
  
  
Sirius escaped from Azkaban two years ago and caused a panic throughout the entire world - even Muggles were afraid of him and kept on the alert, hoping to catch him and have him isolated from society once more. By then I believed every bad thing about him, and prayed he'd stay far away from me and my family... ashamed, now, that I had ever shared a bed with him. Before he was taken to Azkaban, I was never ashamed of what we had done - and I don't think he was, either. We just never spoke of it, unwilling to upset Ted and Remus - the men we had decided to spend our lives with - over what my daughter would call a one-night stand'.   
  
Mum, Sirius is innocent.... he's been trying to _protect_ Harry all this time, not kill him!  
  
Nymphadora's urgent words had driven me to Grimmauld Place to see if it was true. And he was there... my cousin, ravaged by twelve years in prison, thin and wasted despite the meals Remus and Molly cooked for him, almost unrecognizable due to his straggly, waist-length hair and the shadow of raspy stubble that darkened his cheeks. His lovely blue eyes were now dull, haunted by memories that I didn't dare try to imagine. His fierce temper, which he had kept under firm control when he was younger, was now always dangerously close to the surface of his personality. He was apt to snarl at anyone who tried to be friendly and was nothing at all like the smiling boy I remembered. Even Remus was not free from Sirius' barbs; more than once I saw him looking at Sirius with deep hurt and worry in his gaze.  
  
It hurt me deeply to see what he had become, and I didn't stay very long. At home I wept for his fate and the man he would have been if Lily and James were still alive. Lethe, indeed.  
  
  
Now he's dead. He died trying to stop Bellatrix from killing Harry; a hero's death' was the way Kingsley Shacklebolt and Alastor Moody described it to me. Hero's death', shit. He never wanted to be a hero; all he wanted was to live with his lover and his friends and his godson and be _happy_.... but any possibility of being happy was torn away from him along with his life.   
  
I wish I could have said goodbye.... held him one more time, kissed him, told him not to be sad. It's all I can do for him now to join the Order of the Phoenix and fight in his place, and all I can do to hold Remus' hand and let him cry.   
  
  
  
I cry, too. For Sirius Black... my cousin, my friend.... and my first love.  
  
  



End file.
